Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Do Christian Colleges Prepare Women For Marriage?


No, I don't think Christian colleges prepare women at all for marriage or child raising.  I think all Christian colleges should offer courses like this course at the Masters College.  This is the course description ~

Titus 2:3-5 instructs the older women to "admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God will not be discredited."  This passage implies that the younger women learns how to ~

Use time management skills in her home.
Manage the family finances.
Cook nutritious meals.
Practice hospitality.
Joyfully submit to her husband.
Raise her children in the "fear and admonition of the Lord"
{Ephesians 6:4}...

 ...so that the Word of God will not be discredited.

 Can you imagine what a great start women would have in being wives and mothers if they took this class??!!!  Cassi really wanted to go to this college and major in Home Economics.  Ken wasn't interested when he saw the price tag of almost $20,000 per semester when he knew I teach her all of those things for free.

I still think it would be a fabulous idea if all the Christian colleges offered these courses as requirements for all women just as Bible classes are required since the majority of them will one day be wives and mothers.  Also there are very few older women teaching the younger women these skills anymore.  What do you think?  Don't you think this is badly needed in our colleges?  I think many young women would love to take courses on these very important life skills.

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Posted by Always Learning at 6:00 AM
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Emily's avatar

Emily · 579 weeks ago

No, I don't think that homemaking and how to be a good wife should be taught in colleges. These are things that can and should be taught in the home as well as in short courses that are done extracurricularly.
College should be left to teach academics and not homemaking skills. Keep colleges for the elite and so that a college degree will actually stand for something!
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Jamie · 579 weeks ago

Although I appreciate the logic, I am generally not a fan of colleges teaching classes like this for three reasons:

1. Homemaking skills require time and practice to master which it is almost impossible to realistically provide in the context of a single semester course (or even across semesters when women are living in dorm situations). Girls are far better served by having access to this kind of training either when they are young and have the opportunity to practice on their family, or when they are newly married and learning their way around a home of their own.

2. Cost & Access. College, even Bible college, is expensive and it isn't appropriate for or accessible to everyone, yet every women needs these skills. There's also absolutely no reason why teaching these skills effectively should cost what it does to get them at college. How are we teaching our daughters good fiscal management if we send them to an expensive class for things that could have been learned far more cost effectively in other ways?

3. Supplanting. I believe you were right on the money in this post with the verse that says older women are instructed to teach the younger. That system was written into the Bible for us for a reason - it is still the very best way for women to get the personalized, practical, and timely instruction they need from instructors with appropriate experience and hard-earned wisdom. It may sound a bit naive to say, but I believe it is not in our best interest to support or promote anything which downplays the need for or circumvents the building up and participation in that system!

Hmm... this got long. Sorry! Obviously a great post if it gave me so much to think about already! :)
2 replies · active 579 weeks ago
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Cynthia · 579 weeks ago

I took home ec in middle school, where it was a standard part of the curriculum. I think that's where it belongs - by the time they graduate high school, kids should know the basics of financial management, how to cook a nutritious meal, and something about child development and healthy relationships. Not everyone goes to college.

Relationships: Ultimately, the best method of instruction is directly learning by example!

$20,000 per semester, though, sounds absurd, or at least unnecessary.

It would be more efficient and cost-effective to break down the curriculum and study the areas separately. You can learn cooking from cookbooks and YouTube, supplemented by local classes in the community, and that would be fine for the average home cook. If someone was looking for career training, professional chef training would be an option. I have a religious friend who did this, and she now has a great home-based business catering and teaching cooking classes. Same thing with nutrition - there are plenty of basic nutrition courses out there for free or at a low cost, and someone who wanted professional qualifications would be better served by getting their Registered Dietician designation (another field that offers flexible opportunities and hours).

Basic financial skills can be learned through a night school course. Balancing a check book was something that we were taught in our first year of high school. You can read some good basic books on family financial planning: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/06/08/the-... Again, if someone is looking for career training, bookkeeping or accounting can be studied in junior colleges, even on a correspondence or night school basis (I remember my dad doing this while I was growing up). Again, bookkeepers can set their own hours and even work from home while remotely logging onto their customer's computer systems.

Child development is important. Most people, though, don't need a great deal of background theory in child psychology. They just need some basics. You can get free or low-cost information from the American Academy of Pediatrics, public health departments, reputable websites and books like the What to Expect series. I also love the book "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk", which is wonderful advice for any relationship, in really clear and simple language.

Sewing skills are really optional today. The price of clothing is much lower than it was years ago, so you really don't save that much, if anything, by sewing yourself. It's worthwhile if your family has specific needs or you have a passion for it. Again, sewing isn't really an academic subject, so you could easily learn it through a local course in the community.

Bottom line: courses in the community, or at junior/community colleges, or even some apprenticeship programs, make more sense if money is an issue.
3 replies · active 579 weeks ago
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Kim's avatar

Kim · 579 weeks ago

The degree is called Home Economics. These kind of classes used to be taught on the high school level but have cut to teach computers. I was recently talking to a friends, and we both agreed that kids are graduating without life skills (finance, cooking, time management, etc) and these can be taught easily at the jr high level, as kids are stuck before turning 16. I agree with Jamie. Unless you are pursuing a Home Ec degree, you should know by now or be prepared to learn. The church has such an opportunity to fill this gap, which is growing, yet I (at my church) get more eye rolls than call to action.
2 replies · active 579 weeks ago
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Amanda · 579 weeks ago

I see your POV. I guess I agree that it should be taught at college, but I think that the family and church has majorly dropped the ball because this should be THEIR responsibility, first in the home, then reinforced via the church. I suppose as a last resort, it makes sense to be taught in college, but I think when the teaching begins younger, it is easier to teach our young ladies.

I'm of the thought that our girls should not be sent to college just because that's "what we do." I expect to get heat for that, but so be it. (Of course, I'm not the biggest fan of sending our sons to college either - I'd rather my son learns a skill and do it on his own than go to a university - if college is necessary, then I'd encourage our children to take distance programs and still live at home - for both the financial benefits and the lack of social garbage that happens even at Christian schools. So many Christian schools are also abandoning the Scriptures to embrace man's ideas - I just read this morning about a professor from Moody who believes we should interpret Genesis via application of Eastern cosmology. What? This is just one example).

So I agree with you, yes and no. Yes, it should be done, but it should be done first at home, beginning when our girls are young.
1 reply · active 579 weeks ago
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mvstephenson 44p · 579 weeks ago

I would LOVE to have had a class like this in college! I knew how to make eggs and mac & cheese (from the box) when my husband and I started dating. I figured out a great deal more on my own but a class would have been very helpful! I still struggle quite a bit, even now after being married 6 years.
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Jacqueline · 579 weeks ago

I would love to see a real class of seriously interested young women learning from an older woman or women. It would be great fun, excellent for practical kills, and grow some rich friendships and mentorships. Still the best place is at the godly mother's side from the youngest ages. Great and needed topic today. Does Master's College really have that class?
1 reply · active 579 weeks ago
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Tiffany · 579 weeks ago

In my church, girls are taught many of these things starting at the age of 12, up through 18. On Sundays we learned the gospel side of things and once during the week we would get together and work on the more practical aspects of things. Also - I went to a traditional university and majored in Family Consumer Science. I took all sorts of home management, cooking, interior design, and child rearing classes. It was wonderful!
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Jo · 579 weeks ago

I am feeling truly blessed, not only was I taught everything I needed to know about home management (plus sewing, knitting and handicrafts) from my mother, my aunts also taught me many things. I belong to a large extended Christian family where the women are very active in sharing of skills and knowledge. I then passed on all my skills to my children and only the other day my son thanked me for teaching him how to cook as it has been a lifesaver for him. Not only did my mother play an active role, my dad taught me many skills to such as gardening skills and jam making (my dad was the jam expert in our family).

These are basic life skills to be honest and it makes me cross that mothers (and fathers) have neglected their roles as parents in one of the fundamentals in life. As to submit to my husband – that is taught through living examples and once again, my large extended family was full of wonderful examples of this.
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Susan · 579 weeks ago

I graduated high school in 1978 to go to college and with a major in Home Economics and minor in Child Development. Because that where my interests were, I knew how to cook and sew and had been babysitting since I was 12. By the time I was finished with year 3 most schools were cutting back those programs and teaching jobs were nonexistent in Texas. So I quit school and got married. The observations I have are that that some of the classes were idiotic. Household equipment for on thing sounds easy but was the hardest class for me. I wasn't interested in how stuff worked, how a house was wired. My boyfriend at the time made fun of me and called it the pots and pans class. I didn't go to a Christian college, I went to a state school and as you can imagine the Child Development program was based on total permissiveness and "never tell a child no". That pretty much sent me running for home. That course basically would help you know how to run a daycare. Anyway…that's my story. By the way, I learned all of the skills that I loved and still love so from my mom. If she didn't know how to do something she found someone who could show me. Now I am enjoying teaching my daughter.
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Courtney · 579 weeks ago

I didn't learn how to cook when I was young (I could barely boil water when I left home) but I picked it up eventually. I learned the basics of sewing and gardening from my dad, and finances from my mom, but those also seem like things you could learn pretty easily these days, from books or blogs. I guess if I had heard about a home economics course in college, I might have taken it for fun, even though I'm not a Christian and don't plan to be a keeper at home. I liked taking courses outside my major, just to feel more balanced. But I agree that $20,000 a semester sure is a lot! I'm not sure I would have even been willing to pay that for my chemical engineering degree.
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Lee Lee Bug · 579 weeks ago

This should be taught in high school like it was when I was a student in the 1980s. Basic home finance/budgeting should also be taught as part of every high school math curriculum. No one, male or female, should graduate from high school without being able to cook an egg, sew on a button or create a family budget. These are basic life skills.
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Tami · 579 weeks ago

My daughter attended The Master's College and graduated with the degree Lori mentions. She attended community college her first two years and finished out at Master's. This helped with the cost. Also, we paid nowhere near $20,000 a semester after scholarships, etc. We home schooled her through high school so she had a good start in "home ec", but as a young woman who desired a college degree yet did not have any career aspirations (she wanted to be a keeper at home and home with children), this was a wonderful choice! She learned so much more than cooking or sewing, but was mentored and encouraged by Godly women, was challenged by Dr. MacArthur, was pushed academically and had many opportunities to serve. She is now married to a wonderful young man whom she met at Master's, is home with our sweet grandson, and already mentoring and encouraging those younger than her! She is making a lovely home, decorating on a budget, fixing home cooked meals, sewing some of her own clothes, helping friends plan their weddings, caring for her son and being a helper to her husband. She is enjoying using the gifts God has given her and, in her case, is very grateful for the opportunity to hold a college degree that prepared her for exactly what she wanted to do!
1 reply · active 579 weeks ago

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